[Haven] Meeting A Cloud

[Balthazar Black]

28 Ashan 721

After writing a brief update to Kura and sending it through her echo scroll, Miranda was right behind Balthazar again as they moved back towards the Ashwoods on their own. Balthazar had made the decision to leave his weapons behind but Miranda kept her sword on her in case something else in the Ashwoods tried to get the best of them or if Balthazar tried anything clever. She was good with a weapon but no one knew exactly how Miranda would stack up to Balthazar in unarmed combat. Fortunately, combat was the last thing on Balthazar's mind as a child-like fascination drove him to seek out the strange and unfamiliar creature they'd seen. They reached the tree at the edge of the Ashwoods with the telltale signs of Balthazar's hammer digging into it from dozens of throws while he was training with it a mere break ago.

Balthazar thought about brining others with them from the settlement but he wasn't looking to turn this into a hunting party so he wanted to see if he and Miranda could discover more about the creature on their own. Miranda did not talk much, she was never really one for conversation, but her silence as they moved back into the Ashwoods discomforted him a little bit more than her pervious silence had. The two of them moved forwards through the dead and the special trees, looking around them for the creature. Of course it couldn't have been that easy. A secret but now futile hope that Balthazar had been holding onto was that the creature would just return to where they'd found it the first time after they were gone for long enough. They'd have to track it down... which presented some issues. Balthazar was not a hunter. He was a skilled detective but hunting animals and people were different- mostly in terms of the social aspect.

He couldn't go around asking anyone if they'd seen the creature because there was no one in the woods to ask. Similarly he couldn't just fly up into the sky and look around for it like he could have in better times. He needed to be smarter. He needed to think of-

"Black?" Miranda's voice shook the former mage from his thoughts and he turned to find her holding a clump of white fur. His eyes widened, recognizing the fur as the same type the creature had on it. Miranda held the fur out and Balthazar took it in his hand. Even now, he thought of how he might have been able to use attunement to find the creature... but he was mundane. Fur was a start. Fur had to come from the creature and more probably would have too... they just needed to find it.

"Excellent eyes, Preston." Balthazar said as he looked up towards the tree branches where they'd seen the creature the first time. The benefit of his memory was the ability to recall the exact direction it had gone off in. He began walking that way, Miranda followed behind silently, and Balthazar kept scanning the ground and treeline for any more signs of white fur. The trees were spread out enough that the creature managed to move through them for the most part but there were a few places where it looked like the beast scrapped against a tree. What looked initially like snow quickly became white fur in the mind of the man on the mission.

They picked up the pace a little as the trail slowly became clearer- there were trees with obviously broken and chewed on branches to indicate they were moving in the right direction. Fuego scout ahead, if you see anything bad, let me know. Balthazar instructed the diri who nodded, hopped down from his shoulder, ran off a little bit ahead of them. Sending Fuego had become one of the better methods of scouting that Balthazar discovered since his sentence. Balthazar was limited but Fuego was invisible to all but him and the Fire Forged. Balthazar and Miranda eventually came upon a small clearing, a very small clearing, in the woods where the trail of white fur and chewed/ broken trees seemed to draw to an end.

[Balthazar Black]

28 Ashan 721

Standing in the clearing, the duo looking around the sky for any sign of the creature from before but apart from the clues that had lead them there, it seemed the trail ran cold. Again, Balthazar was not hunter. He just had a good eye and the skills of a detective. Tracking people and animals were different things. Balthazar was applying the logic of a man to the creature, not the logic of an animal. It had eaten so what would it be doing next? It was hard to gauge with an animal you did not know. Balthazar knew what a scalvwing did after they ate, but he was not thinking of Tornado and this massive beast in the same light. Instead his mind began to wander back to their first encounter with the creature and how its eyes seemed to find their weapons before it ran. He was unarmed this time but not Miranda. "If we find it, please don't draw your sword." Balthazar asked the Flame Trooper who shook her head slightly.

"I'll do my duty to the Elements." Miranda responded with a level voice and her hand still on his hilt of her sword. If she measured the creature and decided it was a threat, he couldn't stop her from chasing it off without coming into conflict and he was certain that conflict would startle it so what would be the point?

"I know, but I don't think the creature is violent." Balthazar replied quietly as he looked through the trees for the big fluff of white they'd seen before. It should have been easy to spot the thing so the fact they couldn't see it made Balthazar think they needed to keep moving- he just didn't know where they would move too next. He didn't see any more fur or broken trees. It appeared the creature had gone above the tree line and stopped brushing against the branches. He thought about asking Miranda for her thoughts but he knew she'd be brief. Miranda was reserved, quiet. She didn't chat... but this wasn't exactly chat. It was for that reason that he did not explain his interest in the creature but it should have been fairly obvious. It was massive, eating plants next to their settlement, it seemed relatively well mannered for a creature in the wild, and it flew. If nothing else he'd have wanted to see it again to figure out how it flew without wings.

Balthazar took a deep breath to cast aside the thoughts in his head and focus on what remained ahead. They still needed to find it again. Balthazar looked up through the trees to gauge the remaining trial-light and then decided they could spare a few more bits walking to the woods before they would have to turn back. He was not necessarily concerned with being out after dark but he did not want to be gone from the settlement for so long. He trusted his guards to maintain order but there was work that needed doing. He could not chase clouds forever.

In the few bits that they continued moving through the Ashwoods, they did not find anything. It was far more disheartening than Balthazar thought it would be and much like when Elisabeth left, he felt an emptiness fill him as he and Miranda walked back through the woods towards the spot they'd entered. At least, with memory like his, it was easier not to get lost. They didn't talk on the way back, a silence growing between the two of them like a fungus. However, like a mushroom, the silence turned out to serve a purpose.

As the duo came back to the training tree, the tree which Balthazar had been throwing his hammer at all trial and damaging the surface of- breaking off bits and pieces to make it more jagged unintentionally, they heard the cloud they were looking for scratching it's back on the dead tree. Balthazar's eye's widened in shock, surprise, and delight, but he froze where he was standing. Miranda advanced forward a few more steps and put her hand on her sword but the duo watched the creature without alerting it this time. It had gone up on its hind legs to rub its back on the tree and when it came back down onto all it's feet, the impact was surprisingly soft- perhaps softened by that which allowed them to fly. Still... the ground shook a little and there was a thud. It turned and looked for a moment, embarrassed, then scared. It began to beat its feet on the ground and then slowly lifted off the floor.

Balthazar wanted to shout for it to wait and to run towards it, but he didn't. He remained exactly where he was standing with both of his hands held out at his sides so the creature could see he was unarmed. Miranda stayed where she was with her hand where it was. The creature didn't leave. It was maybe a foot off the ground when it stopped and looked at the two of them curiously. When neither Balthazar nor Miranda approached, the creature lowered itself gently back onto the ground- eyes still locked on the two humans. It took a tentative step towards the duo until it saw Miranda's hand on her sword and stopped. It looked at the unarmed Balthazar, then Miranda, then Balthazar again and it bowed its head slightly- or maybe it was measuring to see if it could skewer both of them with one charge. Balthazar wasn't sure but he took a cautious step forward and the creature's head did not move.

Another step, the creature kept its head bowed. "Hello?" The sound of his voice caused the beast to look up at him, alert for a moment before bowing his head again. Balthazar took another step and reached his hand out towards its large white forehead. Now that he was closer he saw not all the fur was white, there was a strip of brown running along the creature's back but maybe that was just from scratching it against trees? Balthazar's hand brushed against the strange thing's head and it looked up at him. Even for Balthazar it was a little intimidating to be so close to such a large, horned creature... but he didn't feel threatened. Wherever this had come from, it was no wild animal. It was trained... but who had trained it? Where had it come from? Perhaps the eruption and the fallout that followed had set it loose and it had been surviving off whatever it could manage since.

There were many possibilities, but they were cast aside as Miranda approached and the creature made a huffing noise then beat its feet a little and lifted into the air. She stopped, mostly because Balthazar backed away so he was closer to her, and removed her hand from her sword. The creature seemed to calm down again and settled back onto the ground. "She's not going to hurt you," Balthazar said to the beast in what he hoped was a calming voice, "You're safe here."

[Squirrel]

Intervention.

This thread is being declared non-canon for misrepresentation of NPCs and metagaming. And I'm going to be blunt here, it's an absurd level.

Balthazar is, for the purposes of this thread, approaching an entirely unknown creature. He has done no research prior to approaching it and therefore does not know that it is non-hostile in-character, nor does anyone else in his party at this moment. The creature that he is approaching is described as several thousand pounds in size. The Elements guarding him would never, under any circumstances, simply allow him to wander off chasing an entirely unknown creature of that size and entirely unknown temperament, even if they were also accompanying him and carrying weapons of their own. His justification for knowing that the creature is non-hostile, noticing where its eyes moved before fleeing, would not hold up under the slightest bit of scrutiny from anyone assigned to maintaining his care. Miranda is even shown to consider the creature a threat, yet never thinks to remove Balthazar from the situation.

I understand that this is a plot that has already been awarded after reaching 750 renown and that the legendary mount 'Sumo' has already been approved via the PSF. However. This thread and the plot that represents the acquisition of Sumo is being declared non-canon because it is clear that Balthazar is using OOC information that Sumo is a non-hostile creature without any actual evidence to show for it, and frankly, the Elements treating Balthazar over the course of this plot are acting like simpletons by letting Balthazar chase a wild, unknown, several-thousand-pound flying monster with no weapons of his own and a single guard to watch him and obey his orders not to attack it. If this was anything other than the creature written within the PSF, Balthazar would have been gored on the spot.

If you would like to rewrite a new thread or plotline for the acquisition of Sumo as per the PSF, you are still free to do so. However, please approach it with more of the thought and care that the acquisition of a Legendary Mount deserves, and please keep in mind the attitudes of your Element guards, who have a keen interest in Balthazar's safety and wellbeing. Please also remember that while Sumo is written as having an intelligent and docile temperament that character perceptions must be limited to appropriate skill levels, in this case being Animal Husbandry and Animal Training.

As always, if you have any concerns or disagreements with this judgement, please send a PM to me. Happy writing.